Eleventh
by arcadiandiamond
Summary: The Eleventh Doctor pays Jack a visit... But that's not what Jack wanted.


Jack moaned, winded, as he was thrown against the Hub's back wall. Well, considering that it had multiple entrances, where exactly the back was was a debatable fact, but he'd always thought that this narrow strip of bare brick, tucked next to the medical bay, was the back. He winced and tried to raise himself up without dragging his exposed back across the jagged wall where his shirt, and the skin underneath, had been slashed open.

Slightly anxiously, half-frustrated and partially apprehensive, he looked up. His eyelids fluttered from the dust that he'd been thrown into (see, it was the back corner, otherwise somebody would clean it, wouldn't they?) and he regarded the man standing before him.

A man he thought he'd known… Twice now.

A man who still wasn't ginger. He was younger and shorter now, his hair longer and a thick lock of it falling artfully across his face and obscuring one of his hazel eyes. Some distance behind him, at the base of the invisible lift, stood a young redhead, eyes low and trying to appear impassive, yet he saw the defence in her stance, the way that she believed what his Doctor was doing must be right.

It was as though, Jack thought, a time machine had taken at least fifteen years off the Doctor's appearance. And if that woman were Donna – Jack felt a clenching inside at what he thought the Doctor must have gone through, losing her just after letting Rose go again – then they really were a set. But the woman behind him wasn't Donna, and the Doctor wasn't what he was before. He was different. And that scared Jack. There weren't many forces he feared would take Torchwood down, and the Doctor hadn't even been one of them; Jack had trusted him absolutely. He swallowed, his heart slowly calming from the blow the Doctor had dealt him with closed fist, but still picking up pace from what appeared to be happening.

"Doctor" He said it with barely the inflection of a question, the inflection that betrayed, clear as day, his compressed panic.

"What did you do here?" The Doctor's voice was quiet. His initial flash appeared to have had subsided, but his stance was still subtly threatening, confident, and he had Jack in a corner and wounded.

"I told you" Jack replied quietly. "I rebuilt Torchwood in your honor. I might not do exactly what you do, but I have my standards. You know me, Doctor."

"I thought I did. You're a rookie, Jack! You're running in with guns and you're capturing aliens and keeping them captive. Not to mention the people you've hurt." The Doctor stared him down.

Jack stood up nervously. His heart was beginning to hammer again. He had no idea what was happening. Slowly, his anger at what was happening bubbled to the surface.

"But it's all I can do. All I can do without going mad. If I stayed still and did everything I possibly could, I'd drown in some of the things I see and do. And Doctor. You are…" Jack cast around for words and felt his heart materialising on his sleeve. "Beyond me. I can't do what you can do. Not with words, not with the way you swan around with your TARDIS. I do what I can with what I've been given."

The Doctor's glare deepened.

"So leave it to me! I protect people. I've protected the earth way before you! Even longer, considering you're from three thousand years in the future." He turned away and seemed to ponder for a moment. Even though he looked upwards, he wasn't taking in the Hub, Jack's pride and joy.

"Don't blame me for that" Jack finished quietly.

"I should stop you. I pretty much created you, didn't I?"

Jack felt his fear turn to ice and curdle. Jagged edges of panic dug into the edges of his consciousness.

"You can't be held responsible for yourself. You couldn't do anything."

Jack remembered what Martha had told him. He'd wreaked revenge on the Family of Blood with a vengeance to border the insane. Why hadn't he anticipated that something like this could happen?

Because the Doctor was always good. The Doctor was always there to help, not to destroy.

This couldn't be his Doctor.

"No. That was me. I did this for you."

"You did it wrong."

"But. Doctor. We've come through the end of the world."

"Clearly, it wasn't."

"It would have been, had we not been here."

"If it was all going to go up in flames, I would have been here."

"You weren't! I prayed and prayed, but you didn't appear."

"I'm always here to help"

"You're not helping me right now"

"You're a monster, Jack. You know what you did. I can't let you go on like that."

"You know what I did, too. You should see there wasn't anything else I could have done."

The Doctor broke their rally again. He glared sullenly into the middle distance. Jack experienced the unfamiliar and unpleasant feeling that came with him losing control.

"What are you going to do with me?" he finally asked. Jack was afraid of the answer, but the tension mounting inside him was enough to tear him apart.

"Eh. Leave you here. You're far too much hassle to drag through time and space, and more of a liability. I'll be checking in on you, though. And remember. You answer to me. Don't vex me."

The Doctor turned on his heel and strode off. At the base of the lift, he first offered his arm to the redhead, and they stepped on together. He smiled at her, and snatches of phrase reached Jack's ears.

"Just had to deal with him. Laundry from the old me. You know. Now, what had I thought? Oh, yes… Kavimbula Triludayte. Fifty-first century. You'll like this…"

And the lift disappeared through the roof. The spare paver for the square above lowered itself into place where the lift had just been, ready for anyone else to leave.

One of Jack's hands rose to nervously, unbelievingly explore the bruise that was already beginning to blossom across his highly set cheekbone. His Doctor had returned. After the nightmare he'd lived, his flights across the stars and back again to renew Torchwood with Gwen, he had finally reappeared.

But it hadn't been what he'd wanted. The exchange hadn't been the help he'd hoped for. The acknowledgement that yes, it all hurt, but he could go on. He'd only come back because he felt his purpose still beckoned, and it was, by the faintest margin, better than the other options he had. But he'd wanted the Doctor to tell him that it was all okay. Not to strike him down.

Now, Jack collapsed against the back wall again. The tears sparkled in his eyes. He'd lost his Doctor, just when he needed to be made better.


End file.
